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Charles Stross

The Trade of Queens (Merchant Princes): Bk. 6 Hardcover – 4 April 2010

by Charles Stross (Author)

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A dissident faction of the Clan, the alternate universe group of families that has traded covertly with our world for a century or more, has carried nuclear devices between the worlds and exploded them in Washington, DC, killing the President of the United States. Now they will exterminate the rest of the Clan and keep Miriam alive only long enough to bear her child, the heir to the throne of their land in the Gruinmarkt world. Mike Fleming, late of US intelligence, has just survived an attack on his life in Massachusetts and knows the worst and deepest secret: behind the horrifying plot is a faction of the US government itself, preparing for a political takeover in the aftermath of terrifying disaster. There is no safe place except, perhaps, in the third alternate world, New Britain - which has just had a revolution and a nuclear incident of its own.

Print length

304 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Tor Books
Publication date

4 April 2010
Dimensions

16.21 x 2.78 x 24.26 cm
ISBN-10

0765316730
ISBN-13

978-0765316738
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Product description

About the Author

Charles Stross is the author of the bestselling Merchant Princes series, the Laundry series, and several stand-alone novels including Glasshouse, Accelerando, and Saturn's Children. Born in Leeds, England, in 1964, Stross studied in London and Bradford, earning degrees in pharmacy and computer science. Over the next decade and a half he worked as a pharmacist, a technical writer, a software engineer, and eventually as a prolific journalist covering the IT industry. His short fiction began attracting wide attention in the late 1990s; his first novel, Singularity Sky, appeared in 2003. He has subsequently won the Hugo Award twice. He lives with his wife in Edinburgh, Scotland, in a flat that is slightly older than the state of Texas.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Tor Books; 1st edition (4 April 2010)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0765316730
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0765316738
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 16.21 x 2.78 x 24.26 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 2,887,820 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 118,983 in Science Fiction (Books)

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62 ratings

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Charles Stross

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Charles Stross, 50, is a full-time science fiction writer and resident of Edinburgh, Scotland. The author of six Hugo-nominated novels and winner of the 2005, 2010, and 2015 Hugo awards for best novella, Stross's works have been translated into over twelve languages.

Like many writers, Stross has had a variety of careers, occupations, and job-shaped-catastrophes in the past, from pharmacist (he quit after the second police stake-out) to first code monkey on the team of a successful dot-com startup (with brilliant timing he tried to change employer just as the bubble burst).

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5 star		42%
4 star		16%
3 star		18%
2 star		15%
1 star		9%

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Ed.F

an excellent end to this phase of the series

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 29 July 2010

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A really gripping ending to this complex and entertaining series. As the civil war between the Gruinmarkt world walkers grows and extends into both "our" reality and the mangled empire of New Britain the very existence of the world walkers is under threat and their own factions insist on making that threat much more real. Driving the plot are brutal attacks on Washington DC and the public unveiling of the ability to cross dimensions which lead to a truly extravagant and utterly ruthless response from the new US President with his very definite approach to dealing with "unknown unknowns".

Most of the series' plot threads are sew up nicely but the series ends with no definite closure, the clan are still very much exposed and their traditional way of life extinguished. I await new volumes set in the same universes which hopefully will expand the clan's future.

Top notch stuff.

2 people found this helpful

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R. Lythgoe

Merchant Princes series

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 24 October 2011

Verified Purchase

This series started with an interesting and original premise which the first book started to explore. However as it went on the series degenerates into a rather tiresome soap opera, in which plot is sacrificed for complexity, apparently for its own sake. The characters are not developed and become less and less credible. By the last book i'd frankly lost interest in them.

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James Davidson

Brilliant series, this the last book.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 28 June 2013

Verified Purchase

Read the whole Merchant Princes series, 6 books. Only problem is that the first 3 are Kindle books, the next 2 are paper backs and this the last was a cheap (£3.60) American hardback . Now waiting for what happened next?

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 3 March 2012

Verified Purchase

As good as the other books in the series the tension builds & the plot lines come together well, but leave you wanting more! a great read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 September 2019

This book is the last in The Merchant Princes series, originally 6 books later republished as three larger books encompassing pairs of the originals.

I generally hate series where the individual books have no real endings – or worse still cliffhanger endings. However, I would be prepared to make an exception for this series because for me it was a terrific story that was hard to put down. The story had many threads, but it all revolved around a group of people who had the ability to “world-walk” – switch between parallel worlds that were at different stages of development. I found the concept made a great series, and although I’ve seen negative comments about it, for me it was a terrific read.

BUT – a long series of 6 original books has got to have a great ending, tying up all the threads. As I got to the latter stages of this final book I could see that this was not happening. Instead it finished with many threads unresolved. Moreover – spoiler alert - as several other reviews reveal the final climax and it is very relevant to my big complaint, I can say that the book ended with a very long and tedious description of the US sending a mass of planes to carry out a carpet bombing with hydrogen bombs of the alternate world. It was a pointless, massive overkill of a mainly peasant population, carried out it seemed – with no real explanation of the rationale – as a fit of pique by an arrogant (recently promoted) US president. And there, in the main, the story just stopped, with no exploration of the consequences, or effect on the protagonists, who were the unfair targets of the bombing but who escaped it, though with negative consequences.

So for me at least, this great series was ruined by lack of a proper ending and a hugely over-the-top climax that almost seemed to be intended mainly to make some political point rather than finish the story. It’s two stars rather than one because of the high quality of the first five books, but don’t read the series unless you don’t mind it having an awful finish.

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A. J. Poulter

A fitting end to a groundbreaking series

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 3 April 2011

Sadly, this is the last book in this series. Most series end by running out of steam, their plots all worn out. This series, unusually, still has multiple plotlines left.

The core concept, which started out as a fantasy device, is a North American setting of alternate realities, which certain individuals can 'jump' between, when staring at a unique pattern for the destination reality. The 'World Walkers' from families with this ability use it to run illegal drug operations in one alternate reality that resembles contemporary America. There are two different 'crime' families, who fell out in a feud in times past. Miriam, the lead character, brought up in the American 'reality', is an heir, via her mother, to leadership of the main 'Family'.

She has essentially driven the plot throughout the series, as her American upbringing and original ideas continually grate against the conservative Family 'old guard'. Miriam discovers another reality, a British colony isolated by a powerful France, in which revolution against its failed monarchy is brewing. She creates new business here and makes a friend who ends up high in government after the revolution breaks. She even makes contact with the despised 'lost family'.

In this final book the Family old guard make their play. Despite deals with the corrupt US VP, they steal suitcase nukes and use them against Washington as a warning. The US though has researched alternate world jumping and cracked the science behind it. An attack to wipe out the Families is planned, with the added bonus of access to all the oil in the 'Texas' of the Family reality. Miriam and her supporters flee to the 'revolution' reality but bump into elements of the lost Family in league with a ruthless doctor who was running a hidden breeding program for world walkers. The only weak element of this book is how much it drops the reader into things: there are "info-dumps" but they are few and far between. Do not start reading here.

While plot threads are tied up, others could be opened by the use of other alternate Americas, discovered in this series but not explored. Even if no more books are ever forthcoming, this series would work well on television.

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The Trade of Queens (Merchant Princes): Bk. 6 Hardcover – 4 April 2010

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Product description

About the Author

Product details

About the author

Charles Stross

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Top reviews from United Kingdom

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